In the normal course of affairs, sentencing follows upon a verdict of guilty like day after night. But then, the Supreme Court doesn’t stick its nose in between the two to issue a ruling as to presidential immunity. And then the defendant, now a convicted felon pending sentencing, isn’t elected President of the United States of America. Justice Juan Merchan is in uncharted territory, there being neither rules nor precedent to inform his next move.

What to do?

The judge overseeing Donald Trump’s criminal hush money trial has adjourned his sentencing, which was set for next week.

Judge Juan Merchan also agreed to hold off on issuing his decision on presidential immunity until after he reviews the parties’ filings.

Merchan granted Trump’s request to file a motion to dismiss the case, ordering his legal team to submit their papers by December 2, and prosecutors have a week to respond. Trump’s team wanted to have until December 20 to file their paperwork.

The prosecution has conceded that sentencing should be delayed until after Trump completes his term of office.

In a letter to Merchan earlier this month, the district attorney’s office also acknowledged that Trump is not likely to be sentenced “until after the end of Defendant’s upcoming presidential term.” Although District Attorney Alvin Bragg, a Democrat, has said Trump’s felony conviction should stand, a source close to the district attorney’s office said it is open to a four-year pause of the case.

The defense, unsurprisingly, argues that the case should be dismissed in its entirety, based upon the presidential immunity decision, the interference with an orderly presidential transition and, of course, the claim that this prosecution is nothing more than political lawfare to impair Trump’s re-election, even though it failed miserably to achieve that end.

For the judge, the duty is far less clear. The Supreme Court’s decision in United States v. Trump has been grossly exaggerated by commentators seeking to impugn the Court by claiming it immunizes Trump for pretty much everything and turns him into a king when it does nothing of the sort. Not that it’s a good decision. It’s not. It’s a deeply flawed decision. But it’s not the decision that’s largely been sold to a credulous public.

And there is a jury verdict. Whether the verdict will stand on appeal remains to be seen, but in the meantime, Justice Merchan needs to figure out what to do about the impact of the evidentiary implications of the Supreme Court’s Trump decision, not the best part of the ruling incidentally. Some evidence at trial may well be precluded by immunity, although that part was largely tangential and duplicative, meaning that the conviction would otherwise stand on the evidence and any admissabiity error was harmless.

Granted, neither the judge nor the prosecution could have known that the Supreme Court would rule that conduct presumed immune would be inadmissible in evidence during the trial. But now that they do, does it require a new trial or is it susceptible to harmless error analysis? Or will Justice Merchan rule that while presumptively immune, it was admissible as having no impact on presidential functions and thus changes nothing?

As Trump has now been re-elected, like it or not, with full knowledge that he had been convicted, it’s impossible to seriously argue that sentence should be imposed that would interfere with the performance of the position of president. Elections have consequences, one of which is that felonious Trump is also presidential Trump, and presidents have a job to do. It is not left to a state, or a judge, to impair the elected president’s ability to perform that job. To sentence the president-elect now, whether to a term of incarceration, probation or something in between, would have consequences that could affect the functioning of the presidency.

Either delay or dismissal, of course, will be seen by Team Trump as a huge victory, effectively putting his conviction out of mind and rendering it an effective nullity. Sure, it may come back four years from now, but who cares? By then, if old man Trump lives that long, it will be nothing more than a trivial footnote in the otherwise sordid history of the Trump brand.

But what else can Justice Juan Merchan do?